Sidingsound

Readers of Eee 701 Planetoid (my blog devoted to the Asus Eee 701 ‘netbook’) may be aware that I’m a big fan of Dropbox, the online storage/file synchronisation service which also happens to work perfectly with the 701. I just wanted to share a quick tip for Dropbox I learned from an article at Lifehacker, which may be of use to other users, especially if they’re running Linux or Mac OS X:

As you may know, installing the Dropbox client on your Mac, Linux or Windows computer, gives you a special folder into which you place other folders or files; these are then copied not only to the online Dropbox storage space, but to any other computers linked to your account. This is very handy, especially if you have a laptop or other portable machine; it’s perfect for my Eee netbook, as I can back up files to Dropbox and my Mac with very little effort.

But what if you wanted to link folders/files on one machine to Dropbox, which aren’t located within the Dropbox folder? For instance, my Eee (running the Eeebuntu Linux OS) has a “Documents” folder in my home directory, and I’d like this to be backed up to Dropbox (nothing sensitive or confidential there, BTW), even though the folder should really stay where it is.

The answer—certainly if you’re on Linux/Mac—is simple: you just create a symbolic link (or ’symlink’—like a Mac alias or Windows shortcut) within the Dropbox folder, which points to the folder (or file) you’d like to link to. In the Linux and Mac terminal, you would change to the Dropbox folder, and from there, enter:

ln -s /path/to/your/item

This would create a symlink in the Dropbox folder with the same name—if you wanted a different name, you enter the new name for your symlink after the path:

ln -s /path/to/your/item alternative_name

(I would recommend symlinking a folder rather than a file for this purpose, just to be ‘tidy’.)

I use this method to ‘place’ my Eee’s Documents folder within Dropbox, so it appears to exist in two places (within my home directory, and within the Dropbox folder). The contents of ‘Documents’ are backed up to Dropbox, and also to the Dropbox folder on our Mac, meaning that in effect I have three copies of each item in the folder.

Check out the original Lifehacker article (“Sync files and folders outside your Dropbox folder“) for more details, including how to achieve the symlinking effect on Windows (basically, if you’re on Vista or Win7, use MKLINK at the command prompt).

Last October, I posted about a small problem which I was trying to work out: how to synchronise the calendars on our Mac and my Nokia N95 mobile phone, with Google Calendar.

Four months on, and I’m sorry to say I haven’t made much progress in the interim. To recap, these are the essentials of the setup which existed prior to last October:

• The N95 calendar synced “over the air” with Google Calendar via the GooSync service.
• The Mac calendar synced with the N95 via iSync on Mac OS X.
• The Mac can also update Google Calendar directly via iCal, thanks to GC’s CalDAV interface.

You may have worked out that Google Calendar acts here as the de facto “master” calendar, i.e. the primary copy of the calendar data. In this setup, the Mac doesn’t have a “local” copy of this data (it connects to Google’s server and displays what’s there), whilst the N95 does have its own copy of the data, but still treats Google as the “master” version.

This arrangement worked fine until last October, when GooSync ended its free service level, in favour of “GooSync Lite” (£5.99 per year). I haven’t renewed my subscription to date, as I’ve been prevaricating on what would be the best option—a lifetime subscription to GooSync Premium is £40, with a fair number of additional features, so that might be worth consideration. (The same service costs £20 for 12 months, and £30 for two years; how likely is it that GooSync might disappear within that time?)

So, at present, I can access Google Calendar via the Web, or via CalDAV (using either iCal on our Mac, or Mozilla Thunderbird (via the Lightning calendar add-on) on my Linux-powered Asus Eee 701 netbook). If I want my calendar synced to the N95, at present I would have to sync the phone with the Mac rather than Google; this is all well and good, but what if I am away from home and therefore unable to access the Mac?

I am also unsure whether iSync will transfer calendar items which aren’t located in the Mac’s own iCal database—i.e. because they’re on Google’s servers instead. For me, this is a wider issue: the Mac and netbook can only display the calendar if they have Internet access (more of a problem for the netbook, as the Mac stays at home). Therefore, I would like to find out whether it’s possible to sync the Mac and netbook calendars with Google (i.e. create synchronised copies on these machines of the events on Google), so that the events can be viewed and interacted with when the machines are offline.

I think I have a few options at this stage:

• “Admit defeat”, and cough up for a GooSync subscription. Otherwise known as the “path of least resistance”, at least this would sort out the N95/Google sync issue. If there are SyncML-compatible clients for Mac and Linux, I suspect GooSync Premium might also solve the “local copies on Mac and netbook” issue above, as GP allows up to four “devices” to use the service; this may require an email to GooSync to clarify.
• Sync the N95 with the Mac (and/or netbook) instead of Google. This would rely on a few “ducks in a row”: for one, clarifying whether iSync on the Mac needs the calendar items to be present in the Mac’s iCal database first. There is apromising-looking “one ring to rule them all” syncing utility for the Linux GNOME desktop—Conduit—which looks like it might be able to act as the go-between for Google, the netbook and the N95, but so far it appears that mobile phones are not yet supported explicitly (no doubt that will follow).
• Some combination of the above—e.g. GooSync for the N95, and other methods for the Mac and netbook.

So, the saga continues—just hope I can come up with a suitable solution before that vein in my head goes “pop”…

At the present time, I use a Web-based service for keeping up with RSS feeds. (I won’t name it, but if you really have to know, you can hazard a guess or hunt through my “lifestream” entries for clues, off-the-cuff references, etc.)

For various reasons, I am looking to move away from using this service, to reduce the amount of free demographic information for advertising purposes which they could extract from my usage of their facilities, if they were so minded (and I strongly suspect they may be). I would like to move my feed-reading activity to a “desktop” aggregator application; fortunately, the online service provides a feature to export all my RSS/Atom subscriptions to an OPML file, which any aggregator worth its salt can import and re-use.

The catch? Obviously, a major benefit of a Web-hosted feed-reader service is its “access anywhere” advantage—i.e. if you have an Internet connection and a browser, you can log on wherever you happen to be. If I was running an aggregator application on (say) my Mac and my netbook, the two apps would presumably use separate “databases”, which would normally be difficult to keep in sync.

However, I use Dropbox to provide me with a folder on each machine which is kept in sync via Dropbox’s online storage area. This means that if an application allows you to specify a location for its configuration settings, it’s possible to store these on Dropbox, and therefore share the same settings between machines. (I already do this with a couple of programs—e.g. an encrypted password database—and it works like a treat.)

So, here’s my question:

Does anyone know of a cross-platform RSS aggregator—preferably, which will run under Mac OS X and Linux—which allows you to share the same “database” of feeds, posts read, etc. between multiple machines?

I’ve already thought of one or two possibilities myself:

• BlogBridge satisfies the Mac/Linux test, and it helps that they say the application is free and open-source. However, the synchronisation of settings between machines is achieved by setting up an account with BlogBridge, meaning that this element is not entirely under your control (a major reason for my considering this move in the first place).
• Thunderbird has feed-reading capabilities, and there is guidance out there on storing your Thunderbird profile on Dropbox (though it’s Windows-centric, I think the advice could be adapted). However, the idea of placing my unencrypted (?) e-mail details on an external server doesn’t appeal particularly, though I could put up with storing just my feed-reading data.

So, I’ll continue my hunt for a solution, and I’d be pleased to hear from anyone out there who might have a handy idea or two

A couple of months back, I looked back on some of my “computing milestones” from the past fifteen years or so, and in passing, mentioned that for a couple of years I was the proud owner of a Psion Series 5mx.

Whilst I had time to write about how I was getting on the Internet with it in 2001 (via my then mobile phone—a Nokia 6310i, as I recall—via GPRS over an infrared link!), I didn’t mention another use for the Psion at the time: it was also my calendar, which I synchronised with Lotus Organizer (sic) on my desktop PC via PsiWin.

Of course, there’s little new in syncing a PDA with a PC/Mac—owners of handhelds have been doing this since the 1990s. However, after parting with my Psion I didn’t get back into calendar-syncing activity until acquiring my current mobile phone (a Nokia N95), in the summer of 2007. This syncs very nicely with our iMac (either over USB, or more often, wirelessly via Bluetooth), but it can also exchange data with calendar hosts on the Internet.

Since last year, I’ve been syncing Google Calendar with the N95 over the Internet (3G or WiFi, whichever is available). A sync setup has evolved over time between the iMac, the N95 and Google Calendar where:

• Google acts as the de facto ‘master’ calendar, mainly because until relatively recently, Apple iCal couldn’t update Google Calendar directly. Therefore, I set up iCal to “read” the GC data, and updated GC via either the N95 or the Web interface. (I just learned that iCal now supports “write access” to GC via CalDAV, of which more shortly.)
• Until now, the N95 has synced with Google Calendar over HTTP, via the GooSync online service. (You will note the past tense, the reason for which follows in a moment.) I also sync via HTTP to Nokia’s Ovi service, as it seems to me one can never have too many data backups…

The problem with GooSync, is that they have just discontinued their Free service, in favour of offering “Lite” and “Premium” packages. The “Lite” package isn’t ruinously expensive (about £6 a year), but being a bit of a cheap sort (!), I thought I’d look around for free alternative solutions for syncing between Google Calendar and my N95, or even completely different approaches.

Well, at time of writing, I’m still looking. Basically, I haven’t found another free service offering sync between S60 phones and Google Calendar over SyncML (the preferred method for S60); they’re all paid services. Google’s own SyncML-based service is limited on S60 to contact information (so no calendar sync); however, they offer contacts and calendar sync if you’re prepared to download Nokia Mail for Exchange, which Google warns may result in data loss (“make sure to back up any important data before you set up Google Sync”, but then that’s good advice anyway).

One positive development: I’ve managed to set up iCal on the Mac to access Google Calendar via CalDAV, so I can now not only read GC items within iCal, but add them as well. Whilst I could get around the GC-N95 sync problem by syncing the N95 and Mac (i.e. the Mac becomes the ‘master’), this wouldn’t work if I’m away from home, and I’d also be stuck if the home Internet connection goes down.

Loads of fun, anyway. In the end, it may turn out that I have to bite the bullet and pay for a Google Calendar syncing service after all (in which case, I’d probably stick with GooSync). It all makes me feel as if I took the ability to sync my calendar online from my phone, for free, somewhat for granted.

Whatever the case, it looks like I have some weighing-up of options to do.

Steve Litchfield, the mobile technology journalist and creator/presenter of The Phones Show, made a somewhat poignant comment on his Twitter feed a few days back:

Kind of sad that in 2009, I choose my smartphone based on the premise of “Which one sucks the least” 8-(

I replied via Twitter that the net effect of finding out about the smartphones currently on the market, has been to strengthen my inclination to hang onto my venerable Nokia N95 “classic” until it falls utterly to pieces, expires in a puff of smoke or otherwise “goes to join the choir invisible”. (Obviously, I expressed that within the 140 characters allowed, but you catch my drift )

Whilst it’s no secret that I like my gadgets, I don’t feel the need to ensure that they are the “latest, greatest and up-to-datest”—put simply, if they do what I want them to do, they could look like a potato or run on clockwork as far as I care. The N95 is a case in point: it does many things, it does most of them very well, it is still working fine, the firmware (operating software) is now mature and reliable, and I am genuinely happy with it (and yes, I have watched the competition closely, as you’ll see).

I upgraded to my N95 in the summer of 2007, and whilst it has been superseded by seemingly countless models in the ensuing two years, there hasn’t been a single handset from any manufacturer in my view, which has matched the range of features (and competency at them) which the N95 offers, for a price which doesn’t leave me glancing nervously at the monthly household budget.

Oh, there have been a couple of phones which “came close”, and to name but three:

• the Nokia N82 offered most of the same features as the N95, and added a xenon flash to make it possibly the most capable cameraphone on the market;
• the Samsung i8910 packs HD (720p) video recording and a great screen, but is expensive and only available in the UK on Orange, who apparently “could’ve done better” with the software; and
• the new Nokia N900 “internet tablet” looks great, but again the price is likely to be eye-watering, and we’ll have to see if my network offers it (as I don’t want to switch).

When it comes down to basics, though: quite simply, I’m generally content with my N95, and even more so with the monthly tariff I’m on with my network, which is now really quite modest whilst suiting my needs nicely.

Of course, there’s the question of what I’d do if my N95 failed, broke beyond repair, suffered some nasty accident (dropped in the toilet, fell in a cement mixer, etc.), and I had to replace it. Assuming I couldn’t get a replacement N95 without going on eBay or the like, and I wanted a new phone, there’s only really one handset which I think would offer me similar features (though not all of them) at a fairly low cost, and that’s the Nokia E75. I would be sacrificing two megapixels of camera resolution (and the Carl Zeiss lens) and video editor of the N95, but I would be gaining a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and USB charging (and possibly more), and retaining many of the N95 features I use.

I don’t know if my network would offer the E75 at the time I would “need” it, or if there will be a better alternative by that stage. However, I’m hoping that my N95 has at least a year or two more in it, so I can make the most of possibly the best all-round smartphone Nokia has ever produced. And nearly three years on from its introduction, I think that’s no small achievement.

Last night, I wrote a blog post about the rumours swirling around, that T-Mobile UK was about to be bought by one of its rivals. I put the post together on my Nokia N95 (my wife was on the Mac), but it appears that for some reason my post failed to publish.

Actually, I don’t really mind—partly because the piece was rather poorly-written in my view, but mostly because it has been overtaken by events. This morning, the BBC is reporting that the UK arms of T-Mobile and Orange are to merge, in a deal which would make the combined network the UK’s largest.

My first reaction was dismay—ironically, I left Orange for T-Mobile in 2004, partly because the former had a data package which was behind the times even back then. I have always been very content with the service I receive from T-Mobile, especially in recent months as I’ve been able to go on a very reasonable monthly tariff with Web’n'Walk (T-Mobile’s excellent “all you can eat (within reason)” 3G data package, and I am very disappointed that this might all be about to change.

I suppose we will just have to see what happens from here—particularly, whether this is a “merger” as the report says, or simply T-Mobile getting “Borg-ed” by its larger rival. My special concern is with Orange, as they have a poor reputation in certain quarters for the modifications they make to the firmware of the phones they carry (the Samsung i8910 is but one case in point), though if I stay with my N95 as long as possible, this would be a moot point.

Anyway, whatever happens, I think I’ll start “shopping around” the other mobile networks to see what’s on offer, and hope that for the time being at least, there won’t be much change (if any) to the service I am currently receiving.

Today (27th August 2009) witnessed the “soft launch” of the Nokia N900, the latest in the company’s line of “Internet tablet” devices powered by the Maemo (Linux) operating system. (The other devices before it were the N770, N800 and N810, in case anyone wondered.)

I’ve been keeping an eye on Nokia’s Maemo devices since they first began appearing a couple of years back, and although before now they’ve never quite packed enough features to warrant my serious attention (and have also been priced a bit out of my “pocket-money” range), the N900 looks as if it may be the first of the line to do so.

Judging by the pictures and videos which have emerged this week, the N900 may be a significant step forward in a number of areas:

• it is noticeably smaller than its forbears—closer in size and general style to Nokia’s N97 smartphone (though still a little larger);
• like the N97 (and for that matter, my N95), it packs a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, with the option to upload directly to Flickr; and
• most importantly: it is the first of Nokia’s Maemo devices to include built-in mobile phone and 3G data capabilities.

It is this last feature which has really grabbed my attention, as the N900 now has the potential to provide a true “one-stop” device—combining the features of a mobile phone and mobile computing device, as few if any Nokia devices have done before it. You may have noticed me returning to the “mobile computing” theme several times in the past, with my attempts to see if my Nokia N95 (paired with a Bluetooth keyboard) can perform the tasks which would normally require a laptop. The short answer to this is: yes, it can be done, but not always as elegantly as I might like (although the N95 comes closer to this than most devices).

So, providing that my mobile phone network ends up carrying the N900 (and I can upgrade for a price that won’t make my wallet weep), it could well be the handset which finally puts my trusty N95 out to pasture. At this stage, there’s little on the hardware front which I would quibble with (on the contrary: the specifications look very attractive), but I have compiled a list of ten queries regarding the Maemo software’s capabilities, which I would ideally like positive answers to before I would consider it seriously as an N95 replacement. (I could come up with a few more, but ten is a nice round number )

1. Is Skype available for Maemo, and is video-calling possible with it? (For that matter, will mobile networks in the UK allow Skype on the N900, or try and block/cripple it?)
2. Is there VoIP (Internet telephony) capability on the N900 (especially SIP)?
3. Does the device provide geotagging of photos? (There’s a GPS receiver in the N900, so I would be amazed if geotagging isn’t present.)
4. The N900 includes uploading facilities for Flickr, so is it possible to add Pixelpipe as a destination (as with Nokia Share Online on the N95)?
5. Are there any video-editing solutions for Maemo? (A video editor at the same level as the N95’s would be fine by me, but even a means for basic trimming of clips would be better than nothing.)
6. While we’re on the subject of video: any way to stream live video to Qik (as the N95 can)? (I rarely use Qik anyway, but it’s a “nice-to-have”.)
7. Is there a Maemo port (or equivalent) of Audacity, for audio recording and editing? (If so, the N900 could make an ideal “portable podcasting studio”.)
8. Aside from Nokia Maps, is there any mapping software (equivalent of Google Maps) for Maemo? (I would really miss Google Maps from my N95, so I hope there is a usable alternative on the N900.)
9. Will the BBC iPlayer work in some shape or form? (I presume the streaming Web version would, and that would be enough for me.)
10. Will the N900 work with Bluetooth keyboards? (Yes, I know the N900 has a keyboard built-in, and that would do for short texts, but I’d really rather use my Apple wireless keyboard for serious text entry. It works perfectly with my N95, and the N800 supports Bluetooth keyboards, so I’d hope this is retained in the N900.)

I suspect an hour or two on the Web may answer many of the above, and I’ll post some updates on this site in due course when I’ve found them. As I mentioned, some of these are “nice-to-haves”, whilst other features would be important enough to make me think again about the N900 if they were missing and/or unlikely to be added. (For instance, I would definitely want to use Skype on the device, and video-calling over and above this would be a definite plus.)

An alternative I have thought of, would be to try and find an end-of-line Linux ‘netbook’ (such as an Asus Eee 701 or a first-generation Acer Aspire One) at a “knockdown” price (say, around £99), and pair this with the N95 for 3G data, whilst using the N95 for the tasks above which the netbook isn’t capable of). Obviously, if one device can do all the above (or at least the “important” items) in one unit, that would be preferable to two, but the netbook-plus-N95 combo could have its merits too.

So, now to wait for Nokia World 2009, and then try and find out if/when the N900 is coming to my network…

When we last left the question of how I could record and upload short audio clips from my N95, you may recall that I’d hit a snag: being, that the N95’s built-in voice recorder doesn’t save to MP3 format (only “full-fat” yet poor-quality WAV, or patent-encumbered and poorly-supported AMR), and that the few MP3-capable, third-party audio-recording apps for S60 3rd Edition (and I stress the word “few”), are either expensive, phone-quality audio, or both.

I could have a moan about this (i.e. “how come there is such a gaping hole in the range of software available for S60 devices?”), but instead, I prefer to reveal that I think I have hit upon a solution to audioblogging with the N95. It’s not ideal, because it involves an extra piece of equipment, but for now it will do the job.

The extra item in question, is my iRiver H320—a circa-2005 hard disk-based digital music player, which was referred to in one review as the “Soviet iPod” (due to its bulky nature and somewhat clunky interface), though it actually does quite a few things that even the latest iPods don’t. The relevant features here from that list are:

• it has a built-in microphone, or can take an external one;
• it records to MP3 format (at various bitrates); and
• it has a USB host function (also known as USB OTG).

That last feature, in case you wondered, means that one can connect a USB mass storage device (e.g. a USB flash or hard drive) to the H320, as if the latter were a PC. As the N95 can act as a mass storage device, it means I can transfer recordings made on the H320 over to the N95, and then upload the file(s) from the N95 as normal—all without needing another computer.

At least, that’s the theory, and I’ll need to try it out sometime, but this sounds like a solution to the problem of audioblogging from the N95, at least until someone wonderful comes up with an equivalent of Audacity for S60…

Who would’ve thought it—I go away on holiday with my family for a week, ready to photo/video/audio-blog the whole proceedings with my N95, and… well, knock me down with a pot of Mumbles’ legendary ice cream parlour’s finest, if I wasn’t so busy having fun with everyone that I didn’t have time to upload more than a couple of photos to Twitpic. (Incidentally, if you’re ever in the Swansea area and have a bit of a ’sweet tooth’, Joe’s ice cream parlour in Mumbles is an absolute must-visit. Just take our friends’ advice and go for the ‘plain’ vanilla one first, then work your way through the menu…)

So, how did it go? Well, we had a pretty good time, I think, topped off by my (impossible-odds-defying) unexpectedly meeting one of my favourite musician/composers in a folk music instrument store… oh, you mean how the N95 content uploads went? Well, pretty good overall, although I did encounter two “flies in the ointment” with the system:

• Perhaps a bit obvious, but even where you’re fortunate enough (as I am) to be on a 3G network with an “all you can eat” usage policy, that still doesn’t help if the area you’re going to has a low or variable signal strength. I’d almost forgotten the frustration (from my 56k modem-using days) of having a long upload fail almost at the end, because the sputtering mobile data connection gave out at the last minute; clearly, a good WiFi connection is useful here, if you can find one and (if appropriate) don’t mind paying for it.
• Pixelpipe seems to have its fair share of quirks when uploading the same content to multiple different content sites (which is basically the point of the service), using the Nokia Share Online utility on the N95. There’s probably a whole post I could write about these in detail, but in a nutshell, the items you fill out for a new NSO upload (tags, summary, etc.) don’t always appear where you would expect them, when you check your content sites later. For instance, when you upload a video to YouTube, your ’summary’ text doesn’t appear for the uploaded video—YouTube just shows the title of your video where the summary should be.
  To be fair, the problems are almost certainly as much (if not more) due to the content services’ application interfaces (i.e. how Pixelpipe interacts with them), but I have to keep a mental note of what works well and what doesn’t, so I can correct the glitches later.

Oh, and I’m pleased to report that I finally invested in a new 8Gb Sandisk Mobile Ultra MicroSD memory card for the N95 (four times more capacity than the previous card), so no more mad scrambles to find more storage space on long trips where I’m taking lots of video (and perhaps more room for the odd movie or three!).

Must go—I’m installing Xubuntu on an old PC for Naomi. Lots of fun…

A quick update on the weekend ahead: according to the friends we’re staying with, the area where we’ll be going may not have 3G network coverage (or at least not as much as I’m used to), and we won’t have any WiFi.

This means that whilst I should be able to get some Twitter and blog posts out (providing there’s at least GPRS or GSM data), I may have to wait a couple of days to upload any batches of photos (and more likely, any videos) I take while we’re away. Be sure to keep an eye on my Twitter feed and this blog for updates as I have them, and hopefully I’ll have more 3G access than I’m expecting to.

Posted by Wordmobi